Mister Pip- Visions from a Misunderstood World

The blue-grey jacket of the book almost obscured itself into anonymity amidst a sea of loud lettering and bold covers. However, it was perhaps this soothing subtlety that also made it stand out and brought it to my notice in the heap of books piled on rickety wooden tables at the book sale near Plaza Singapura at Dhoby Ghaut. One look at the blurb, and I wanted this book badly- keeping my budget in mind, I had made up my mind on the number of books I was going to pick up, and once I'd found it, there were no second thoughts. Doris Lessing was abandoned in favour of Lloyd Jones.

Mister Pip is bewitching from the word go. You know how certain books bond with you instantly, talk to you and let you slip into the bodies and minds of their characters effortlessly? Mister Pip is one of them. Set mainly on Bougainville Island, it follows the life of young Matilda and other children trapped in the horrors of revolt, finding succour in the most unimaginable way as all other doors seem closed to them. After their school is closed down, the only white man on the island, Mr. Watts (or Pop Eye as he is called before they learn to really respect him), who is not even a teacher by profession, decides to take on the responsibility of teaching the children. He is not an expert, searches in vain for quite a few answers, but brings with him a gift that delights and gives the children another world to escape into- that of Dickensian London. He reads to them from Great Expectations, a chapter a day, until Matilda (and the others, as she realises gradually), find themselves drawn into Pip's life- she grows protective of Pip, travels with him, feels his pain, despises those who use him badly. She writes his name out on the sand and adorns it, her private shrine to Pip.

Matilda's mother doesn't quite approve of her passion for an imaginary character, though, more so when she realises that her daughter values him and the book more than her own departed relations or her Bible. The depth of her hatred is revealed when she stands unmoved, harbouring a secret while the islanders lose all their possessions to the 'redskins', who, in their quest for the non-existent 'Mister Pip', suspecting him of being a rebel, burn up everything the people own. Trouble is further fomented on the island with the arrival of the rebels, the Rambos, and things spiral downwards rapidly. What, however, remains with Matilda throughout the turmoil, is the story of Pip and the hope it gives her to hold on to. She likens people and circumstances to characters and situations from the book, almost lives in a different world of her own, of grey streets and cold rain and orphans with sudden strokes of good luck. Matilda moves on, goes to Australia to live with her father and finish her schooling, and finds herself in London doing a thesis on Dickens' life.

More than the thread of the story itself, what is appealing and evocative is the description of the characters themselves. You become Matilda, you transform into Mr. Watts. The questions she asks of Mr. Watts seem pertinent and very real. Imagination, that most precious gift given to all of us, is the thing to turn to when no other avenues seem available. The voice in which you say your own name is something which can never be taken away from you. Even when your house amounting to "something about containment that at the same time offers escape" is cruelly burnt down, you have that niche in your head, that secret room, which welcomes you and takes you wherever you want to go- the power of imagination, that parallel universe that the more practical scoff at. It doesn't feed Mr. Watts, as Matilda's mother says, but it gives rise to hope and courage, perhaps just as important as material sustenance.

(I only wish I'd finished Great Expectations before reading Mister Pip. I'd probably have enjoyed it better, because now I know all about the mysterious benefactor and Pip's fortunes. Oh, if only I'd been patient enough to finish it- luckily, I'd read enough to know Mr. Jaggers, Magwitch, Estella and Miss Havisham.)

I have seen reviews that don't really recommend this book and indict it for a plot that tapers out after promising much. Get into the characters' minds, though, and you'll probably see what I mean. It is magic. I hope Mr. Watts wasn't getting into the act, playing a teacher. And I also hope Lloyd Jones isn't pretending, that he means every single word about the enthralling power of books. Because it is all true, every bit of it.

I have met a book which is on the verge of being the most beautiful thing to have happened to me in the past few months.

What need have I of human voices, when the rain and the wind sing to me?

Ordeals

It takes a great deal of goading, threatening and pushing- and some bribing- to get me off to visit a doctor. In this case, what with my manager's continual reminders and my roommates telling me that it would be good to see a doctor for my sore throat and cold, I didn't really have much of a choice. I had to go to the clinic all by myself- not exactly an intrepid bit of action that would secure mention in the annals of history- but I've never done it earlier, so yes, it was a landmark in my life and times. However, it didn't come without a bit of bribery. Though the clinic opens at 8, I decided to go there around 9 so I could visit the library, which opens at 10, and pick up something new. You see, since early this morning, I've had a real craving for any Bronte novel that I haven't read, or maybe Thomas Hardy.

The decision to see the doctor turned out to be reasonably good, because it'll help me recover quicker now, and hopefully put an end to the enemy-of-the-people looks that I get when I cough in public. Paranoia about swine flu grips society, and you can see several mysteriously masked men and women all over the place. Yes, they're probably better off for all the precaution they take, but somehow you can't help associating it a bit with a comic quotient. There you are, immaculately dressed in your best clothes, with a grossly mismatched mask strapped across your face. Weird. But extremely important, if you don't want a nation down with the disease.

Consultation dispensed with, I made my way to the library. I have a sneaky suspicion Charlotte Bronte was reading my mind this morning when, browsing through Anne Bronte's life, I felt that Charlotte had not been very kind to her sister, dismissing a masterpiece like The Tenant of Wildfell Hall for not having an appropriate subject- quite a progressive novel for those times, and so perhaps incurring the wrath of moralists and purists. Anyway, the point is, some sort of curse was cast and the library was still closed at 10.15 am, so I made my way home empty-handed, or to be precise, still bearing the books I was planning to return- Coetzee's Slow Man and the Maisie Dobbs mystery Birds of a Feather. I haven't read Maisie Dobbs yet, but set in the 1930s, I guess it'll have to take the place of a nineteenth-century novel- for the moment.

On the way home, I bought some chocolate, which was promptly confiscated by one of my roommates. She says sugar is not good for a sore throat. She says I should have sugarless tea, avoid juice, avoid cake. For heaven's sake, I tell her, it's a cold, not diabetes. My manager asks me not to read. No ice cream, no pastry, no sugar, no books. This is what they call life?

It's been raining, again. The streets are wet, the last drizzle is just falling from the clouds softly and slowly, the road is already drying up in patches. Sneaky rain! to come so silently and without notice, when it knows a whole city of people is waiting eagerly for it.

Yes indeed, there are other people waiting for the rain as well, I am not imagining it. The other day, a cab driver told me, in no dissatisfied terms, how long it was raining after- weeks of heat, and then, finally, rain. He was thrilled. Excited. This, though he had to drive with the pouring rain forming a thick sheet that he had to plough his car through, the wipers working furiously to break through the white, streaming wall. On either side of the road, greenery flourished with a tropical fervour, alive and awake after days of limpness.

Years from now, will I believe that I actually lived on an island? In a house with huge windows from which I stared out at the streetlights at dawn, having slept or waiting for an insomniac's sleep; or maybe having slept enough for an entire week? Alone, closeted with my thoughts, away from meddling crowds and cities bursting at their seams, people jostling madly to a post en route to the destination. Not that people differ- cribbing, complaining, hurting, envying, sometimes allowing bursts of happiness coming through. Tracing and retracing footprints in search of something elusive. Lost in thought, blank and weary, trudging on nevertheless.

Going to bed when the rest of the world is stirring and grumbling at being forced out of the solace of warm blankets and intricately woven, half-conscious dreams, feeling at peace with yourself, watching grey clouds hang low in the sky- impending rain, not gloom- and the rain fall, come imperceptibly, leave behind traces on the dry dust on the window-panes. Living the moment, knowing or caring nothing about the past and the future, just knowing that right now, the world is indeed a movingly beautiful place to be in.

Numbness hangs heavy in the dim room, almost tangible and material, quiet yet discernible. Emotions are quickly aroused, the senses are keener than ever, the overwhelming sense of well-being comes from deep within, dismissing the physical weariness of a night spent awake with an impatient wave of its hand. How rare these moments are- and all the more precious and valued for their scarcity. They coil up in deep recesses to come at you suddenly when things don't seem quite right.

Hope disguises itself in various ways.

Searching In Vain

I am trying to understand the depth of my dependence on my blog. For some reason today (poetic justice, retribution for past sins?), the Internet is not allowing me to sign in to blogger, and I seem to be taking it for granted that I cannot write today. What a ridiculous idea.

Which brings me back to the question of why I write. Have I turned into a publicity-seeking maverick who has lost all sense of writing for satisfaction, of using words as a palliative to dreary nights and early mornings, as an expression of the highest moments of a still uninitiated, unaccustomed life? Words are pure joy, they evoke a pleasure that is almost sensual, feel them come from deep within, without a second thought, and then find yourself fumbling for that correct word that evades you most annoyingly, you'll know what I mean.

I know, for all my ranting and self-chastising, I am going to put this up on my blog. So why do I need people do read what I write? I am surely not naïve enough to think my writing is a bit of national treasure, to be cherished and preserved for posterity. I have written nothing worthy of attention- the two years of blogging have only been an invitation to view what could well have been written and stacked away in diaries in an attic, to be found years later, dust-covered and moth-eaten, by a generation that would scoff at or be amused by the old-fashioned reminiscences of 'the good times'. Curiosity and a keen eagerness to improve are the only valid reasons that I can think of, really. Curiosity to see how disinterested people view the few incidents and accidents that mark a plain, ordinary life, things that are not out of a book or a movie and could just as well happen to them. Do I write because I simply want to spread happiness and tell people that no matter how hopeless life seems at times, there is that one occasional minute, one fleeting moment, that can make up for all the pain? I honestly doubt that I have any such altruistic motive.

This craving to be read is probably just a phase, and will pass soon enough. I know it will, because deep inside, I know nobody needs a reason to write. Don't you see how words linger in the air, waiting to be grasped, and your mind extends invisible, intangible fingers, that still make their presence felt, to clutch at them and string them together in coherent sentences? Disjoint, perhaps, in the greater whole, and not making enough sense, written down nevertheless because they are simply inviting to be. A spectacular sunset and the people on the train- no connection whatsoever, yet belonging to one single world and calling themselves hoarse to observe them, write about them. Now this, I'd say, is what writing is all about. Finding inspiration in the simplest things, writing because you feel like it, because you can't sleep, not waiting for a magnum opus to come along and sweep people off their feet, just pulling the words out of an invisible hat and setting them down. How does it matter if you don't have a great vocabulary and don't read the classics?

Blame this bit of rambling on nature and biology. I have been trying to keep from sleeping since half past one in the morning, because I have to work the night shift this week, but my body insists on going to bed, and if I sleep this early, I'll end up drowsing at work tonight. But then, as I said, who needs a reason to write? I've had my catnap, and now I'm good to go for atleast a couple more hours, before my brain starts sending out the signals again.