No Two Persons

"No two persons read the same book" (Edmund Wilson). This implies that each reader derives a unique experience from a book. And why not? Taste and temperament vary from one individual to another. Our life experiences further accentuate such differences. The book 'No Two Persons' by Erica Bauermeister, which I read recently, is a novel about the impact a particular book has on several individuals. It was very absorbing and left me with a desire to read the book which had a transformative effect on different individuals but in entirely different ways. No two persons read the same book after all. 

One can say that each of us perceives the world uniquely. When we say the sky is blue, does every one of us have the exact same image on the retina? Our biological bodies have enough in common that we have evolved a consensus regarding the world around us. The question of unique images or sounds would seem less important. 

What about our thoughts and emotions? How we react to stories, art, or music? How unique are we in these? I think it is easy to exaggerate the differences but the fact we have popular books, movies, music and art suggests that we are more alike than different at least within a geographical area or a cultural unit.  There is also our tendency to be influenced by trends. When we travel and interact with different cultures, the differences do surface. But with the world becoming increasingly connected, the boundaries are becoming blurred.

Our likes and dislikes and our opinions may be shaped by the culture or society where we live. There is also a lot that we learn as we grow up. We go through school and college and are exposed to diverse ideas. We are actually taught to think about things in specific ways. While this is undoubtedly useful, does this condition us and make us more predictable and less unique? Do we lose the spontaneity that we had as children? Why do I need courses on 'Literary Appreciation', 'Film Appreciation' and on  theories that are trying tell me how to think about art and literature? If a particular work does not make an impression on me does that mean I somehow lack the ability and therefore must strive to understand it? 

I read books, listen to music or watch movies for entertainment or information. Sometimes I am provoked to think about the subject. But then there are books and films that leave me wondering what they mean. I can look for reviews and such to learn their supposed import. While these may deepen my understanding and even add to my appreciation, I may not be motivated to try if the work does not have an impact on its own to start with. 

This brings me back to the quote I started with. One of the exercises many of us have gone through in school or college is to write a book report. There are sometimes questions regarding what the author meant by certain book or a poem. How are we to know the author's intent? If we accept that each person will have a unique take on the book or the poem, this question should really be about my opinions, never mind the author's. How should the response be evaluated? It strikes me that the instructor's own biases will heavily influence this. If I am unimpressed by a famous literary work (gasp!), the professor may not take kindly to that. I may even be considered a person with poor tastes. If I merely reproduce a scholarly opinion and state that I concur with it, I may get into trouble for plagiarizing. 

It would seem that once a book is published, it is really up to the readers to interpret it after that. The author cedes control of the narrative to some extent. Of course with promotional tours and appearances in talk shows, the authors can guide the process. But they cannot reveal too much at this stage so as to keep the readers interested. I wonder if authors receive reactions for their books entirely different from what they expected. And what role does the publisher play? After all they judge whether a given book will be successful. So how many books do not reach the readers because no editor liked it? All this makes me really appreciate the plight of those who produce original works. 

It must be gratifying to authors to have a book received exactly the way they intended. There are books that resonate particularly well with me. I would like to think that these are perhaps books where the author and I are of one mind. Is it possible to refine one's sensibilities to such an extent that one can mind meld with different authors in this manner? Be a true connoisseur and critic?

Personally, it is hard enough for me to churn out a few paragraphs every once in a while on my pet peeves let alone anything creative. I am very grateful for the friends and family who indulge me and encourage me in this. On the strength of that, I shall keep writing as time permits or ideas occur. I hope that my readers find my views resonating with theirs more often than not. In the meantime, I hope to keep reading and find more books to enjoy, more authors to resonate with. When I go to the library I don't try to borrow the latest bestseller. I browse the new books section and try to pick up works by authors I have not read before with some help from the jacket notes. This way I have found some that I really enjoyed but also some that I found boring or left me in a fog. Well, you can't judge a book by its cover after all! 

Spam, Sham and Scams

I have a confession to make: I miss junk mail sometimes. I have previously written about how the mail is generally filled with unwanted stuff - offers for credit cards or loans, marketing flyers, etc. There is the occasional gem that provides some entertainment. I refer you to my post on this: Free and Pre-Paid. But over the last few years, I guess businesses have come to realize that mailers offer ever diminishing returns in today's digital world. Even spamming us via email is not very effective as smart filters can keep the unwanted stuff away. Newer ways to target us keep coming up as a result. Social media, anyone? 

In the midst of all this, I have noticed a steady decline in the volume of printed flyers and such reaching my mailbox. While not exactly unhappy about this, I still trek to the curbside mailbox every day to fetch the mail with a trace of anticipation. More out of ingrained habit, I think. Having signed up for electronic delivery of all documents with utility companies, banks and others, the task is pretty much just to pick up whatever is there and deposit it in the trash. But now that I am retired and have some time on my hands, I occasionally peruse the mail. And occasionally something or the other catches my eye. Sometimes the mail does deliver.

The other day, 'Digital Coupon Event', announced one colourful flyer. If it is a digital coupon, why are they sending it by snail mail? I moved to the next one and on a whim, decided to open the envelope. The letter inside had a Post-It stuck on it with this message (I am not making this up!): 'This is from my manager. He wants your vehicle'. I was puzzled. Is this some kind of a shake down? What could explain this peremptory demand? I read the actual letter and it turned out that the car dealership wanted to purchase my car. And would like to sell me a new car. The whole thing had shades of a mob deal ('An offer you cannot refuse').

Spam comes to you in many ways including mail and door-to-door. Door-to-door salesmen may be the original spammers. To be fair, I should not call them spammers as they are not trying to defraud people. Sales reps used to knock on doors trying to sell say, encyclopaedia or vacuum cleaners (As an aside, here's a hilarious account of a salesman who got the two mixed up). For major services and products like solar panels, companies still employ people to canvass the neighbourhood. I do feel somewhat sorry for these people as they have to face a lot of rejection, sometimes rude. But they are very persistent. If you do let them in, be prepared to forgo an hour or more of your time with potential follow up visits. 

Phone campaigns used to be big too but with land lines becoming obsolete, they may not offer good returns. I remember the time when so many calls turned out to be from telemarketers. You can put your number on a Do Not Call registry but some organizations are exempt from this. There are political and other organizations seeking contributions that continue to employ phone campaigns. I once picked up such a call (this was many many years ago) and was surprised  to hear the caller say, "Howdy, I am calling from the sheriff's department'. This was a call asking for a donation for the Policemen's Welfare Fund or something like that. Slightly alarmed at being contacted by the police, I ended up donating to the fund. One must not antagonize the local police after all. Looking back though, I think he must have said 'for the Sheriff's department'. I learned later that fund raising is delegated to professionals who receive a percentage of the collection as compensation for their efforts. Some of these callers are, how shall I put it, more enthusiastic than others.

Moving on, as I said before, the volume of mailers has reduced to a trickle now. The action has moved online and to text messages. Since we are more or less inseparable from our phones, we are subject to all sorts of nuisance calls and texts. There is this compulsion to check the message and emails as soon as they arrive since the phone is now pretty much an extension of your body. It takes a lot of discipline to resist the urge. 

While emails can be filtered for spam fairly effectively, text messages manage to get through. The US Postal Service is waiting to deliver my package and needs a confirmation of details if one text is to be believed. Or it is a job offer stating that my skills and experience are a perfect match for an unspecified job. Or asking me to sell a house I do not own. Other messages merely say 'Hey' or 'Hello'. Still others maintain that somehow the sender has you in their contact list but they cannot remember who you are. One even demanded to know why I hadn't called! 

These messages may seem harmless and are easy to ignore. Others set off alarm bells claiming that your PayPal account has been charged for something or that you are facing imminent arrest, for example. But replying to them or clicking on suggested links or calling the number given can take you for a long ride down a rabbit hole. Typically, those who fall victims to these end up in long tortuous phone calls that play on their fears. The callers seem to have the amazing ability to make the victim turn over all sorts of data and actually hand over tidy amounts of cash in some instances. 

There is only one response to all unwanted texts. Delete and report junk. Don't entertain any curiosity, not even for a split second! Be ruthless. Ceaseless vigilance must be exercised. Perhaps now you can understand my longing for the good old days when the spam was politely and unobtrusively left in your mailbox waiting for you to pick up at your leisure.

Stories Retold

The new season of a series had just been released. All ten episodes were available to stream. Streaming is certainly a convenient way to watch your favorite programs. No more recording the program when it airs and no danger of forgetting to record it either. You can now watch it at your convenience. And of course there is also the opportunity to watch the entire series without waiting, in other words, for binge watching. 

Waiting for a week between episodes had its own thrill but that is becoming a thing of the past. With all episodes being dumped online at the same time, there is a fear that someone will spoil the suspense and so one may feel the need to watch all of the episodes as quickly as possible. Or negative opinions from those who have already watched may put one off. Besides, at the end of each episode, the streaming app automatically and conveniently plays the next one. You don't even have to pick up the remote. Who can resist that? 

I must confess that I indulged in binge watching every now and then. Recently when I was confined to the bedroom with Covid, I watched three seasons of a show over as many days. But I then switched to reading and managed to read five books over the next few days. I will say that the latter was more satisfying and certainly more relaxing.

The viewing public has been switching to streaming platforms for quite some time now. Given the intense competition for market share, the longer a viewer can be kept engaged on a platform, the better. If they waited to stream one chapter at a time, who knows if the viewers will return? They may get distracted in this age of short attention spans. So online articles scream at you with headings like 'Why you absolutely must watch the new season now!'. Producers and cast get themselves invited to talk about the serial on radio/TV talk shows to create a buzz that drives viewers to the streaming channels. 

The first time I heard the phrase - binge watching, it was jarring. I don't know why. I mean how is it different from reading a book at one sitting? The book was unputdownable just like the TV remote in the case of binge watching. But the word 'binge' has an unsavoury connotation. Binging is associated with eating or drinking without control and now with watching TV. You do not associate it with reading. You may end up being called a bookworm, but you can possibly wear that epithet as a badge of honor. 

Many studies have shown that reading a book is better than watching TV (It is even better than reading the book on a device). But the idea of watching an entire series by bingeing as opposed to one episode or chapter at a time takes this to another level. Sitting for long hours in front of the TV screen is surely detrimental to one's physical and mental health. While we can and often read a book in one go, that may not be suitable for all types of stories. Some books deserve a slower pace of reading. But reading for long stretches of time is not something to get worried about as far as I know. 

There was a time when new novels would often be serialized in a weekly magazine before being published as a book. Saturday Evening Post used to publish novels as serials. Some of the best novels in Tamil appeared as serials in popular weeklies first. When I was young, this was actually the only way most people got to read a new story. I feel this one installment per week (per month in some cases) format made us savour the book in a different way. We wondered what was coming next as we waited for a fresh serving every week. We discussed the story every time a new chapter came out, sometimes passionately. It is even possible that some of the readers' feedback influenced the course of a novel.

Old issues of the magazines were not thrown out but preserved. It was a common practice to cull out the chapters of the novels from each week and then bind the whole thing together so that one had the entire book in a convenient volume at the end. If the story was a long one - some novels ran for years - then there could be multiple volumes. I was able to read some stories written years before I was born as they had been collected in this fashion -  illustrations and the advertisements included. Some of the magazines had a larger paper size and the illustrations looked gorgeous. 

I am tempted to say that the TV screen and online streaming services have usurped the reading habit but new books are coming out constantly. Bestseller lists are still being compiled. Are there really so many new stories? How many are rehashes of old ones? I think that question is immaterial when you consider this. No matter how many murder mysteries have been written, it seems that there is room for more. Similarly, other stories too are being churned out constantly.

Whether there is something new or whether old themes are being recycled is irrelevant. Human beings have been telling stories to one another for a very long time. And we never tire of listening to them. The earliest cave paintings may actually represent stories. Over the ages, stories like Panchatantra and Hitopadesha, folk tales, and fairy tales have been used to instruct and to entertain the young. Even when the story is old and well-known, it can be retold to a new generation. Take the epics and puranas of India. From time immemorial, these have been told to audiences in many different forms - lecture, songs, and drama. The original versions themselves were written as stories narrated by someone to an audience. And they continue to be performed even today. They have also been made into TV serials and when they were broadcast, the entire country took a break from everything else and watched.  

In other cases, old themes may be updated to the present (or future) time period, appealing to newer audiences. The best science-fiction and fantasy stories do this particularly well. It can be said confidently that no one watches Star Trek for the technology shown there. And  whether a book is set in a hospital or a police precinct or in a space ship, it is not the medical or crime stories but the human drama around the doctors, nurses, detectives and others that audiences find compelling. "It's still the same old story, a fight for love and glory" as the song goes, but made new in some way. 

 

Today we have access to an astounding collection of stories from every corner of the world from every era past and this repository is continuously growing. Each generation leaves its mark on the collection. We can read one chapter at a time or an entire book in one sitting, but we will never run out of reading material. Between surfing the web and streaming movies and serials, whether we will continue to read books is an entirely different question. Which reminds me. Time to get off the computer and head to the library.

The Plastic Problem

I looked at the container again. The sign was a little strange as it said that the plastic bottle was recyclable only if the label was removed but I could not see any label. It took me a while to see that the bottle was actually shrink-wrapped entirely in the label. It was hard to tell where the seam was to separate the label. I wonder how many people would pay attention to this when recycling. Even if they did, it would not be easy to take the label off.

Single-use plastic bags are being banned by many cities and countries around the world. But bags are only a fraction of the problem. Thin plastic film is used widely in packaging. Eliminating it is not that easy. The irony is that this plastic is actually recyclable.  There are companies actually reusing it in making sustainable products. For instance, recycled plastic film is used to manufacture long lasting composite lumber, which is used for benches, decks, and playground sets. The challenge is in collecting and sorting.

Many of us as responsible citizens take the trouble to sort the trash into different bins every week. The municipalities have spent our tax money to institute collection programs. It is indeed satisfying to see the contents of different coloured bins being picked up separately. We assume that the plastic that we diligently separated is going to be recycled. All is therefore well or will be. It therefore came as a rude shock to me to read that most of the plastic picked from the curb is not really being recycled. "Recycling plastic is practically impossible - and the problem is getting worse", according to this article.

We should have anticipated this. We use different kinds of plastics which are indicated by the resin code on the containers if you can locate the sign and read it. It is usually on the bottom and (often) in the same colour as the container. The key point is that the different kinds cannot be processed together for recycling. Can you imagine the effort required to separate the mountain of waste plastic by the resin code? The cost of this alone is prohibitive. The process of actually recycling is not cheap either. At the same time, new plastic can be manufactured at ridiculously low cost. One can understand why manufacturers sold the idea that plastics are recyclable (technically they are) so using new plastic would not appear to create a problem. 

Greenhouse gases are considered the single most important contributor to the warming trend. While debates and controversies abound regarding the causes and ways to deal with them, one can say that curbing the emission of such gases is an important step. The most visible efforts in this direction are aimed at vehicle emissions. There is an encouraging trend here as electric vehicles are becoming more popular. But the use of oil by the chemical industry shows no signs of reduction given our addiction to cheap plastics. Reducing the use of plastics is a key factor in containing global warming.

We can say that we have been living in the age of plastics for the better part of the last hundred years now. Plastics are everywhere with their use still increasing. Waste plastic is clogging waterways and contaminating the oceans or ending up in landfills. Plastics have even entered our bloodstream in the form of microplastics. Yet more new plastic is being manufactured all the time. At the same time it is hard to imagine life without plastics.

We are at a critical point in our existence. Almost every day there is some news about climate change as a result of a warming planet. Heat waves, torrential rains, and other extreme weather events are occurring more frequently and with greater intensity than before. New warnings are issued regularly with urgency by scientists about breaching the catastrophic global warming threshold.

As we observe Earth Day, I wonder if we are going to find a way out of this. The campaign to educate and inform people about the need to reuse and recycle has had a degree of success. It seems that people can be motivated by the need to preserve and conserve so that the impact of climate change can be mitigated. Corporations on the other hand are more concerned about their bottom line and need monetary incentives or punitive regulations. 

Attempts to regulate the industry have only had limited success. The political class campaigns for our votes while soliciting contributions from corporations. When it comes to legislating, their vote often lines up with the interest of the corporations. It's funny how the whole cycle works. Corporations earn money by selling to the consumer. They then contribute some of that to the politicians. Votes flow from the consumers to the politicians and then to the corporations so to speak. The vote and money cycles run counter to the consumer's interest. The consumers, being the source of  money and votes, would seem to have the power to control both the corporations and the politicians. Can we start demanding more eco-friendly products from industry (and be willing to pay for them!) while asking our representatives to prioritize our future over their re-election? Well, I can dream, can't I? 

Much of what I have mentioned is based on my experience here in the US but plastic recycling is a challenge worldwide though some countries have done better than others. But take heart - it is not all doom and gloom. Here is some news on positive trends in climate change and some more about emerging technology to limit climate change. 

Happy Earth Day!

The Artichoke Adventure

Every now and then we order a box of seasonal vegetables from a local farm (you may recall that I wrote about the farm box a couple of years ago). The box is made up of whatever happens to be growing at the given time. During certain times, the box includes a couple of artichokes. I had not seen artichokes before coming to the US but with globalization, it is possible that they are now available in India too. A quick google search brought up a few Indian sites that described the artichoke as a leafy vegetable (it is not the leaves that are eaten) so it is possible that it is still new to India. 

Artichokes have a long history of culinary use. They were cultivated by the ancient Greeks and the Romans. They are considered a delicacy. But the few times I tasted artichokes at restaurants, I was not particularly impressed. The texture was unpredictable with some pieces being tough as leather. So the artichoke was something we never really bought at the market. They look intimidating. We did not know what to do with them and their relatively high price may also have been a factor. 

The first time when we got the artichokes, we had to figure out how to cook them. I found out that most of the bud (it is the bud of the plant that is eaten) is inedible and must be discarded. It is the heart of the artichoke that is sought after. This is covered by a very fibrous and inedible choke (hence the name?) and surrounded by a whole lot of inedible petals that have thorny ends. It is a complicated vegetable. Or bud if you want to be technical. 

How did we decide that this gnarly ball of tough spiny petals is edible? It just boggles my mind. I can understand someone removing the outer petals hoping to find something inside. But if you end up with a fibrous core, surely you would have given up then. I think it must have been particularly difficult to find any other vegetable at that time. Maybe someone took it up as a challenge. Or it was a form of punishment to consume the artichoke and someone got really motivated to make it work! 

Human ingenuity never ceases to amaze me. Many vegetables and fruits appear difficult to handle and  prepare but we have figured out how to eat them. The jackfruit, for example, weighs several kilos and requires power tools to cut it into manageable pieces and plenty of oil just to separate the edible pods if you want to avoid sticky hands and knife. The banana flower has layers of florets and the inedible stamen from over several hundred florets must be removed individually, a task, which was usually performed the night before with all hands on deck. Songs were sung during this to relieve the tedium, if I am not mistaken! Getting to the meat of the coconut requires removing the husk and breaking the shell first. Then there is the bitter gourd. The bitter taste should have warned us to leave it alone. But we somehow persisted. 

With the jackfruit and the pineapple, the fruit of the labor (pardon the pun) is immediately available. With others, more effort is required to cook the vegetable. If one were inclined to count calories, then the manual labor would justify the ultimate calories consumed considering that many of these things get loaded with fats and sugars in the cooking process. But there is the option to eat many vegetables raw without expending any effort. In fact, it may be contended that eating celery raw requires one to spend more calories than actually consumed by eating it. As Ogden Nash puts it, 'Celery raw develops the jaw'. 

To get back to the artichoke, we googled (what else?) to find out a way to prepare the vegetable. Most of the recipes recommended boiling the bud for twenty to thirty minutes and then removing the petals and the choke to get to the heart. Considerable fuel has to be spent in this process. Obviously cooking anything requires fuel but the payback seemed very small in this case. Moreover, just a couple of artichoke hearts are not enough for a family. And yes, you can scrape off the negligible amount of flesh at the bottom of each petal where it is attached to the stem but the whole experience turned out to be somewhat tedious and unsatisfactory and not worth the effort. The next time we received artichokes in the box we gave them to a neighbor. That I thought would be the end of our artichoke adventure. 

Recently I was watching TV and saw a chef prepare a stew with artichokes. It was a revelation. What impressed me most was the way he cut the artichokes. He first cut the top half off and then deftly removed all the petals with a paring knife. Finally, he sliced off  the choke leaving just the heart. All in a matter of seconds. I was quite impressed by the whole thing. I have no idea how the final dish tasted but none of the YouTube videos on how to prepare this funny vegetable showed this technique. Maybe we had used the wrong key words to search.

I am not quite ready to rush out and buy the artichoke considering that a dozen chokes can easily set you back some twenty bucks or more. One can of course buy them canned but then where is the fun in that? Perhaps the next time we get artichokes in the farm box, we will give them another try. In fact, I will even make it my new year resolution! 

Happy New Year! Enjoy your vegetables, of whatever shapes and sizes they may be!